"The White House on Monday threatened to veto legislation funding Amtrak for the next five years, saying House members did not include language in the bill making the railroad more accountable for its decisions."
Amtrak is a government owned corporation formed in 1971. It was created to try and save the lagging passenger rail. This is off of Wikipedia:
"Literature suggests that the causes of the decline of passenger rail were complex. The industry was hobbled by government regulation and labor inflexibility, which undermined passenger rail just as the industry faced an explosion of competition from flexible and subsidized automobile and airplane transportation.[10][11] These for-profit railroads were structured to sell access to elaborate, efficient roads at a profit; they lost in the competition for passengers to parallel, publicly-funded, non-profit turnpikes, air strips, and highways in the sky."
The key word is government regulation. The railroad was killed by it. Maybe we should stop throwing money at this quasi government corporation and let private enterprise take over. $14 billion (of your money) is a lot of money for something that hasn't worked in over twenty years.
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